Chapter One

Chapter One

Casey

She woke screaming.

The dream of hands shoving and pulling, touching her body in the night—so real. Opening her eyes didn't end the nightmare. It made it worse!

The hands in Casey's dream—turned out to belong to creatures covered in red fur. Each of them had four arms. Four hands. They also had a mashed face and smelled like a garbage dump on a hot summer day.

Cleanliness was not a thing with these… monsters.

She was forced to change the description to aliens when they loaded her on a spaceship.

Casey slapped at the hands, kicked with her feet, and kept screaming. She heard her sister, Cameron. Cammy called out once—and then went silent.

Casey screamed even louder, but her younger sister never responded. Cammy was her younger sister by only five minutes. The identical twins were both twenty-eight years old—but Casey definitely embraced those five extra minutes. She was her sister's keeper.

When the four-handed, freaky, stinky aliens strapped her to a table and gave her a shot… she zoned out for several minutes. They fiddled with her ears and the area behind them, and suddenly she understood what they were saying.

They believed she'd sleep for long enough to complete the exam. So, she kept her eyes closed and her breathing slow and even. She didn't bother to tell them that their drugs wouldn't work on her. Not totally.

Nope. Casey's system was unique. She didn't know why, but her body never responded to drugs like it should. She couldn't count the number of times when a doctor said, "It's not supposed to do this." Or "I've never seen a reaction like this." Or her favorite, "You will sleep right through this operation."

No . No, she would not. It was good to know that alien drugs weren't any different. Maybe that could benefit her at some point.

Yes, she was a little floaty, but she was definitely not asleep. She hoped whatever they did to her wouldn't hurt. God. The smell, though. It was definitely getting to her. She was really afraid she'd throw up. Then they'd know she was awake.

Once more, she listened to their conversation. At the moment, they were using a wand. Simply waving it over her body. It didn't hurt. The doctor kept up a running monologue. She was healthy… Blah, Blah…

Yeah—she was healthy. She was a long-distance runner. Her body was a machine. She'd been competing since she was twelve. Casey even medaled in the Olympics when she was younger. Not gold… but still.

The doctor noted there was a small shadow in her lungs. It confused the alien. He didn't know what it could be.

Casey kept breathing and focused on her heart rate. No jump, no crazy escalation. Everything normal here.

She knew what the shadow was. Cancer. She'd felt it. Felt that little bit of difference in her breathing over the last few months. Felt her stamina… stutter.

She'd fought that enemy once. And won. She didn't think she could go through that again, so Casey ignored the change in her body.

Her captors were angry now. Arguing. The doctor had discovered her one major flaw, and the others were pissed.

All Casey's lady bits had been removed when she was fifteen. Once again, she'd been an unusual case. It was rare to develop cervical cancer before your twenties. Most women were much older. But not her. She'd lived through all the treatments and used running as her therapy. It had worked for Casey for fifteen years.

Only now the shadow was back.

But the mother-fucking aliens didn't care about the shadow. Their only concern and what pissed them off—was that she couldn't breed. If it were safe to raise her lashes, she'd roll her eyes.

An excited yell yanked Casey away from worrying about dying of cancer and her own mortality. She heard the alien doctor's exclamation that, "This one is whole!"

This one. They were talking about Cammy. Yes, her sister was whole.

Casey concentrated on the alien conversation. Some words she didn't understand. Names of places, she figured. But the plan was pretty straightforward. Since she couldn't have alien babies, they were going to take Casey to a pleasure planet and make a little extra money by selling her to the owner. She didn't need a detailed diagram to know what that meant.

They planned to sell Cammy as a Breeder. They already had a contract for her, but the buyer would insist she be awake when he took possession of her.

Oh, hell no!

Days Later

On the alien ship, once Casey realized the red freaky aliens had kidnapped her, she changed her strategy.

She remained quiet. Compliant. She did it for several reasons. One—to reserve her energy. Two—hoping to confuse the creepy red aliens. If she was good now, maybe they wouldn't expect her to pitch a fit later.

The third and biggest reason she was cooperating?

She'd seen enough of the spaceship between the medical room and the locked cell they threw her in—to know escape in this place and time would be a mistake. This spacecraft was a flying garbage dump. It smelled horrific. There was refuse and what looked like scrap pieces of the ship piled up in the halls.

Even if she managed to escape her cell and kill or somehow incapacitate all the red aliens—and there were at least ten of them—she had no idea how to pilot anything. Not in space, not in Earth's atmosphere, and not in any capacity.

More importantly, she wouldn't know how to land, or where.

And that wasn't a skill she wanted to learn while they were rocketing past unknown planets and stars. Casey needed to wait until they landed. With her feet planted firmly on the ground, then she could try again.

The red aliens locked her in the cell alone. There were three other cells in this room, but they were all empty. She rarely saw her kidnappers. Twice a day—Casey figured morning and night—they brought her a tube of water and one tasteless, odorless bar about the length of her palm. She choked it down and drank the water. Praying it wouldn't make her sick. She'd eaten ten of those bars.

All she could do in here was pace the cell and worry.

When they removed her from the medical room, Cammy was still unconscious. By Casey's best guesstimate—they had confined her to this small, dreary space for five days. Yet they never brought her sister to join her.

Did that mean Cammy was still unconscious? She had no clue why her sister wasn't responding. There was also no memory of being brought onto the ship. Had one of the red idiots hit her sister when they ripped them out of her little house?

Cameron didn't live with Casey, she lived with her boyfriend. Now that had to be one silver lining in this mess. Casey doubted Cammy would ever see Dawson again. That was worth at least a very quiet, personal celebration. She hated that man. Believed he was the worst possible choice for her sister.

Dawson was mean, selfish, and a misogynistic bastard. He was always nagging at Cammy to lose weight, fix her hair, wear dresses, and shut her mouth. The man truly believed that he was superior to all women in every way. He didn't let her sister talk or express an opinion. Which was hilarious because her sister was brilliant. And Dawson wasn't. Worse—the man didn't like her family and kept her sister from spending time with them.

Casey never understood what Cammy saw in the man.

The night they were taken, the couple fought. It was a heated argument, and Dawson slapped her sister. Before he could stop her—Cam grabbed her purse, slammed out of the house, jumped in her car—and drove to Casey's new place.

She'd moved recently and Dawson didn't know where Casey lived, so he couldn't find Cammy right away.

The sisters sat up for several hours talking, eating ice cream, and plotting how to get all of Cam's stuff out of the apartment before Dawson realized Cam was serious about leaving him. Then they'd gone to sleep… only to wake up in the medical bay on this ship.

Well, Casey woke up.

She needed to pace again. So worried. Casey stood and walked five steps from one end of the barred cell to the other. Passing the pot they gave her to piss in, and the short little cot she had to sit or sleep on. At least she was off the floor.

The dim lights brightened, and she heard several of her captors heading in her direction.

Shit! Casey's heart started to pound, and she rushed back to the cot, sitting and arranging her hands in her lap, then she bent her head. She'd discovered the red, four-armed creepy aliens didn't like eye contact. Were they bringing Cammy to her? Were they landing somewhere? Like that pleasure planet, the aliens talked about when they thought she was medicated.

Taking a deep, slow breath, Casey focused on calming her pulse and ensuring she didn't hyperventilate and pass out. She needed to be ready for whatever happened. Feeling the ship shudder and shake, she really hoped they were landing.

Three of the red aliens moved toward her. They unlocked her cell and motioned her to come with them. Letting her walk between them, with one leading the way and two behind, they headed toward the medical bay without saying a word.

When two furry red men joined the procession in the hall, carrying a limp Cammy on a board between them… Casey rushed to her sister. She was able to run her hand over that precious forehead, brushing the hair out of her eyes before the guards snatched her back. One alien picked up Casey and, lifting her over his head, took her away from the others.

Cammy never moved.

Within moments, the group headed down a ramp. Casey continued to be held by one of her captors. The alien's many arms weren't tight, so when they hit the ground, Casey turned and noticed the other spaceships surrounding them.

It was now or never. Taking a deep breath, she screamed for all she was worth. Then started bucking and kicking, struggling to get away.

One well-placed heel caused the alien holding her to grunt and drop her. Casey took off running, but she didn't get far. One alien reached out and caught her long hair. Jerking her to a stop.

She screeched again, but they quickly contained her. The alien she escaped shoved a gag in her mouth, and that was the end of her attempt to find freedom. She tried not to cry. To continue struggling. But they tied her hands and feet, silenced her screams, and there wasn't much she could do. It was so frustrating to be tied up from head to toe and have a gag shoved in her mouth.

The aliens never said a word to her. As if her struggles weren't worth commenting on. That, more than anything, was demoralizing.

Casey prayed someone heard her cries for help and would come. It was their only chance. But nothing happened.

The aliens didn't cover her eyes. She watched several of the red creeps take Cammy in another direction. They hurried off... away from her group. Casey knew they were taking her sister to a doctor on this planet because they couldn't figure out why the woman they wanted to sell as a breeder… hadn't regained consciousness.

Casey was being taken to the owner of the planet for something the red jerks called assessment and training. Tears fell when Casey realized the sisters wouldn't escape this mess. That she'd probably never see her twin again.

God, she really didn't care what happened to her. If the cancer was back, she figured she didn't have long to live, anyway. But she wanted to protect her sister. To help Cammy get somewhere safe.

Please… help us… she silently pleaded. Please, God, send s omeone to help us .